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[–]axelbrant 334 points335 points  (199 children)



[–]o_oli 101 points102 points  (171 children)


[–]efadd 17 points18 points  (1 child)



[–]5tu 13 points14 points  (5 children)







[–]o_oli 2 points3 points  (0 children)


[–]purduered 25 points26 points  (9 children)


Source: https://i.redd.it/riwqkq38vcez.png

[–]SkyNTP 52 points53 points  (42 children)



[–]iiJokerzace 13 points14 points  (12 children)



[–]zomgitsduke 1 point2 points  (1 child)



[–]MedvedTrader 23 points24 points  (66 children)



It makes sense.

[–]PotentNerdRage 9 points10 points  (63 children)


[–]ep1939 8 points9 points  (54 children)



[–]sbj175 6 points7 points  (52 children)

Interesting. Can you explain further?

[–]ep1939 13 points14 points  (51 children)




Problem is routing.






[–]sbj175 7 points8 points  (10 children)


[–]GoodRedd 5 points6 points  (8 children)


[–]Frogolocalypse 5 points6 points  (7 children)


[–]awoeoc 5 points6 points  (19 children)

Ah lending makes it sense. So everyone sends along credits to each other and st the end of the month payments are sent through both ends. Makes a lot of sense, you could even have something like a card reader merchants have so they can use cards to transfer credit around. We can call them credit cards

[–]Dugg 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Valid concern but the off-chain management of coins is inevitable. Given the core of the network is "on-chain" you don't NEED to participate with anything like this if you don't want to.

[–]SGCleveland 5 points6 points  (5 children)

Here's the thing that I don't think people mention enough; Lightning Network requires the underlying Bitcoin layer. So if you don't want to use Lightning, you don't have to. No one knows for sure, but I've heard some convincing arguments that Lightning will tend towards centralization. If you want to use Lightning with multi-hops so that you open like one payment channel for 6 months and do all your transactions through that, you need to connect to someone who's willing to have lots of channels open, which will probably be a big bank-like entity.

However, if the software gets there, opening up a channel directly to the coffee shop you frequent will be pretty easy. You can then avoid the privacy reduction by just having that channel dedicated to your coffee shop transactions. This will be more expensive though, and so you'll have to pay extra for that additional space on the Blockchain. You have to decide if that trade off is worth it. However, not having the choice at all (which is what BCH seems to offer) has to be worse because there is no trade off decision to make at all.

[–][deleted]  (5 children)


    [–][deleted]  (5 children)


      [–]isoldmywifeonEbay 1152 points1153 points  (246 children)

      This is the information that needs to be posted on this subreddit. Not 'how much money can I make'.

      Lightning changes everything. We need to inform people that the fees and congestion is temporary.

      [–][deleted]  (90 children)


        [–]CreativeMoniker333 84 points85 points  (14 children)

        Lightning will still involve miner fees when closing a channel

        [–]SandwichOfEarl 38 points39 points  (9 children)

        And plus, lightning isn't going to be useful for very large transactions, so those will still need to be handled on-chain.

        [–]hesido 20 points21 points  (5 children)

        Agreed, and I'll add, lightning is not going to help the current situation, at all. Lightning does not change everything, it ADDS something to Bitcoin.

        The current situation is caused by people flooding to exchanges, not by people rushing to buy BigMac meals or Mochaccino. It will not help solve 95% of the current situation.

        Schnorr sigs may help by allowing exchanges to setup incoming tx batches by some sort of not-yet existing service, I need to read up on it but I guess it can allow bundling of incoming tx's from separate parties, and condense their signatures into a single signature.

        By the end of the day, Lightning Network is not designed to handle the current situation. It will ADD a very good functionality, but let's not get carried away. We need bigger blocks and hopefully it will be added alongside of meaningful additions like Schnorr.

        [–]Scytone 2 points3 points  (1 child)

        How is flooding exchanges not going to be impacted by lightning. If the exchange is moving bitcoin around constantly, it would make more sense to take as much of that off chain as possible. At best, lightning resolves all of the issues with time and fees, including exchanges.

        At worst, it resolves the issues with time and fees outside of exchanges.

        It sounds to me like Lightning network can only help insofar as were concerned with speed and fees. Therefore, I think, as far as fees and speed is concerned, its worth implementing. Especially since it does NOT have any of the negative impacts that something like bigger blocks provides. That is a completely different argument though that isn't relevant to LN integration

        [–]TheGreatMuffin 31 points32 points  (2 children)

        *and opening (funding) it

        [–]Mineracc 39 points40 points  (30 children)

        As a Miner I personally don't understand why people still mine Bitcoin. It's way more profitable to mine alts and trade them in for Bitcoin.

        [–]Matholomey 8 points9 points  (10 children)

        When you are a big miner you can't tell for shure that the alt coin you are mining is still at the same price when you want to sell it. Also there isn't enough volume at the price you want.


        Most miners who mine alt coins I would imagine like myself are doing so on multipools that use profit switching algos to automatically mine whatever coin is currently the most profitable like nicehash, zpool, granatgas etc...They never hold or receive the alt coin they're mining. Instead the alt coins are instantly exchanged for the crypto of the miners choice by bots. I ASIC mine both sha256 and scrypt on multipools and get paid in bitcoin for my hashing power. I earn more bitcoin per day than if I were to join a pool like slush and mine bitcoin directly.

        [–]EnlightenedHeathen 5 points6 points  (3 children)

        Out of curiosity, how much bit coin are you making a day doing it this way?

        [–]wildmaiden 5 points6 points  (0 children)

        That's obviously true for Bitcoin too, maybe even more so...

        [–]GoodRedd 4 points5 points  (6 children)

        It's a valid concern, but mining still generates lots of coins.

        Many miners are mining "at a loss" (speculating) because of the inevitable growth of the coin value.

        I imagine that the LN "proof of stake" components will balance out the loss of raw fee profits as well.

        But I guess we'll see!

        [–]zack44087 10 points11 points  (2 children)

        I feel like this is a good place for me to chime in! back in September I bought an Antminer S2 for $250 which I knew would be unprofitable. I made this choice not because I thought that bitcoin would spike to what it is currently, but because I was considering getting an S9, which is the current top of the line, but costs 15x the price of an S2 on ebay. I figured that I could afford $250 to test out how mining worked and get comfortable with it before making such a large investment. I am happy to report that because of the price increase, my S2 which was basically written off due to its hashrate has now become profitable at the current prices! So overall I'm happy, and instead of running it at a loss until I was comfortable with it, I am now running it for a profit!

        [–]bitcoind3 27 points28 points  (24 children)

        Lightning still requires transactions - just less of them.

        Whether this is enough to incentivise miners to keep bitcoin secure is an open question. Right now it seems like transactions are in demand so miners should do ok - but who know what the future holds?

        [–]elguapo4twenty 517 points518 points  (107 children)

        Been hearing that for literally years...

        [–]1one1one 226 points227 points  (53 children)

        V. Buterin one of the lead developers of ethereum says it will take between 2 to 5 years to establish reliable, secure, decentralised scalability. I'd rather realistic predictions, rather than the endless soon! references. At the moment bitcoin is charging 8 dollars for a basic transfer.

        I don't think bitcoin is ready for main stream, i don't think any of the cryptocurrencies are. And with increase in popularity of the space it's only going to get worse.

        [–]TheGreatMuffin 98 points99 points  (18 children)

        I don't think bitcoin is ready for main stream

        You are not wrong. The scalability is one issue, usability another. It takes quite a bit of effort just to understand how to set up a wallet and to secure your private keys (just look at the stream of uninformed people right after price rising, and now think how many more people are still out there who never even heard of reddit, who are not into tech at all etc etc).

        That being said, it all will come sooner as than we think. Paradigm shifts don't happen overnight, but they happen behind the backs of the uninformed masses.

        edit: also - education is super important! Even people who haven't been on board for long can educate complete noobs about basic security, why it's important to have control over your keys etc. Help out people around you who want to inform themselves!




        [–]robertangst88 44 points45 points  (6 children)

        I tell my friends to google and youtube to understand. Then lmk what they decide.

        So far, I've created some monsters that know more crypto than me.

        [–]TheGreatMuffin 19 points20 points  (1 child)

        ... and now you can use those monsters to ask questions and have everything explained to you without googling yourself! Teach me your ways, master :)


        I created an open subreddit called /r/cryptossecurity to build a foundation for people to learn and discuss best practices for securing cryptocurrencies. Please check it out and help build a knowledge base!

        [–]TheGreatMuffin 4 points5 points  (0 children)

        there is a good, less-frequented sub called r/bitcoindiscussion which I like... You can surely get lots of input regarding crypto security and it doesn't make sense to split user traffic even further I think, but good luck to you :)

        [–]stackdatcheese3 9 points10 points  (5 children)

        UX designer here ready to donate my services. I have a good understanding of what makes for an easy experience and my biggest concern to date is the divisibility of bitcoin and other crypto currencies. What makes fiat so handy is the nice round numbers. You can buy so many things with $1, 5, 10, 20, 50 and 100. The simple, rounded numbers are just inherently easy to understand and calculate. With credit and debit use in most cases we no longer even do math to calculate change. This is just not the case with crypto currencies. I can see an argument being made for card transactions but even then an average person will have a difficult grasp on 0.000781 purchase. Sure. We can make up names for smaller nominations but even then we have far more digits to worry about. Say I use a crypto debit card how do we display price that’s easy to understand at the merchant level? Will a bag of chips be just as easy to purchase for 0.000913 of something as say ... $4? This and other issues like it bother me and make me question the whole concept of crypto as currency. I know there will be a ton of objections to my comment from people who are tech literate but there is a vast majority of people who have a difficult time even grasping bitcoin yet alone learning how to use it.

        [–]MathNinja 2 points3 points  (3 children)

        This is a solid point. In science, engineering, and everyday life we intentionally pick unit systems where the quantity we are interested in ranges from about 0.01 to 100 or so.

        If you talk to chemists they measure distance in Angstrom (10-10 meters) because chemical bonds are between about 0.5 and 4.0 Angstrom, which is much easier to reason about. However, most people measure objects in centimeters and meters since that is the scale of most objects we interact with.

        It is very nice that most of what we regularly purchase with dollars, pounds, or euro are between 0.1 and 100 currency units. Even without knowing the exchange rates between those three currencies you can kind of understand how expensive something is.

        However, with BTC you have no idea. Is 0.0001 BTC a cheap cup of coffee or a very expensive starbucks drink? Turns out its a cheap cup of coffee, but you had to do the math right?

        [–]albuminvasion 3 points4 points  (0 children)

        A lot of people live in countries where they don't use $, € or £.

        1.3 billion Chinese use Yuan (0.15 USD), 100m Japanese use Yen (0.001 USD), 100m Russians use Ruble (0.017 USD), 1.2 billion Indians use Rupie (0.016 USD).

        Agree 0.000001 is impractical for daily use. However 0.000001 btc = 100 sats. If bitcoin does come to widespread daily global use, 1 btc is likely to be of the magnitude of 1 million USD. Meaning 100 sat = 1 USD (or 1 sat = 10 Yen or approx 1 rupie or 1¢). No need to solve this "problem" until it actually becomes a problem, and at that point it may not even be a problem anymore ;)

        [–]stackdatcheese3 2 points3 points  (1 child)

        This is my point. Even if we take away the math with card usage, it’s still difficult to tell what something costs especially once we get to 6th, 7th and 8th digits. I can imagine people making all kinds of mistakes which could cost them good money. Heck, I imagine scams will be on the rise too. Even if we display fiat value side by side still have to worry about whether it’s right.

        [–]earonesty 4 points5 points  (1 child)

        Yep everyone is buying in now on expected future utility.... Pretty standard in tech markets though.

        [–]deadbunny 6 points7 points  (0 children)

        No, 99% of people buying now are buying because Bitcoin has gone up 10x+ in a year and they want a piece of the action. Lets not pretend here.

        [–]whomad1215 5 points6 points  (0 children)

        Steam agrees with you, transaction fees and volatility make it unusable as a currency currently.

        [–]ShaidarHaran2 5 points6 points  (3 children)


        Bought another batch during the dip. Went to transfer it out. 0.001btc network fee. 19 Canadian dollars! That's the highest I've ever seen it.

        [–]GenghisKhanSpermShot 47 points48 points  (9 children)

        Kinda hard when miners block Segwit for years.

        [–]Magyars 13 points14 points  (0 children)


        I get why they opposed it for selfish reasons, but this is why we're still so far away from usability.

        [–]ZEUS-MUSCLE 8 points9 points  (1 child)

        Well the RC is finishing up testing and it looks like it works flawlessly. So it's quite literally coming soon.

        [–]earonesty 4 points5 points  (0 children)

        It actually works better than anyone expected. Routes through multiple frameworks? Crazy.

        [–]exmbit 11 points12 points  (0 children)

        Bitcoin LN is already on main net. Now matches need to implement it. As far as I know bitrefill already working on to implicate bitcoin LN as their billing system.

        Peoples need to understand bitcoin is not a company its an open source project where a community is working on it to develop it day by day.

        If you really care about blockchain, stop complaining and do some contribution to improve it.

        [–]TulipTrading 16 points17 points  (2 children)

        And that makes sense, because developing complex projects always takes years.

        [–]juanjux 21 points22 points  (1 child)

        Not only is complex. The amount of value people stores on Bitcoin is huge. It's perfectly normal that they're so conservative.

        [–]typtyphus 11 points12 points  (0 children)

        no, we should rush it to keep bitcoin above the 80% market share. Just increase the block size, because it's less complex too.


        bch people are funny

        [–]jint3i 6 points7 points  (3 children)

        I think it's really strange how the same bankers being critical of bitcoin now definitely suffered through the early days of credit cards. The rate of adoption and the speed of innovation provided by bitcoin is insane by comparison. It's really just a matter of time.

        [–]eqleriq 2 points3 points  (1 child)

        Credit cards? Try checks. Credit cards at least go "buzzzz you don't have the money" right there... check kiting and literally just printing bogus checks with fake info were very real in those early days.

        [–]frenulocorto 7 points8 points  (0 children)

        I made a guide on how to test lightning on testnet: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/7ieuki/how_to_test_lightning_network_on_testnet/

        If someone wants to try some transaction in testnet, give it a read and try. I had strange results in my tests, some transaction did succeed, other had routing problems. Don't know if i'm noob or if there are still some bug in the software (that would be normal for an alpha version)

        [–]ChildishForLife 4 points5 points  (14 children)

        Is there any downside to Lightning?

        [–]isoldmywifeonEbay 6 points7 points  (11 children)

        De-centralisation is a potential worry because companies can open hubs and start charging to run through them. The devs don't seem to see this as a big worry though, so it may not be.

        [–]ChildishForLife 2 points3 points  (1 child)

        That’s what I was thinking too. Maybe they are confident there will be enough free hubs that using the corporate ones will be optional?

        [–]isoldmywifeonEbay 4 points5 points  (0 children)

        That seems to be the thinking. Hopefully it works out. It really needs to.

        [–]JakeAndJavis 4 points5 points  (0 children)

        Seriously, I mean, obviously I love as much as the next person the increasing adoption & money flowing into crypto, but so many people seem to not give a single fuck about the underlying technology that is literally going to revolutionize the world - and it's going to do so even if Bitcoin crashes to a fraction of a penny.

        [–]horseteefs 2 points3 points  (0 children)

        Yes- this all day! Reddit got unbearable during both the surge and fall. Thank fucking god for lightning because I started losing my mind waiting on a transaction from trezor to exchange

        [–]ebaley 1 point2 points  (2 children)

        Volatility won't go away though.

        [–]Turpomann 113 points114 points  (48 children)

        Can't come soon enough. What's the hold up?

        [–]pm_boobs_send_nudes 149 points150 points  (41 children)

        Testing. Plus companies like coinbase will actually have to implement it...which doesn't even support segwit yet.

        [–]isoldmywifeonEbay 45 points46 points  (37 children)

        If they don't hurry with LN, they'll fall behind. People will switch to other exchanges.

        [–]MotherSuperiour 65 points66 points  (27 children)

        Sadly I don't think this is true. Coinbase is just too damn easy to use for noobs. They could be a year late in segwit and still sending 600 sat/B txns and the noobs won't know one way or another

        [–]xtech2201 15 points16 points  (16 children)

        Coinbase is just too damn easy to use for noobs.

        i still use coinbase. i like to think im not a noob anymore. are there any exchanges that allow you to sell btc and deposit funds to a bank account (us person here) that are cheaper? i can learn any website, just need pointers on which ones are legit.

        [–]englersm 24 points25 points  (7 children)

        Gemini has really low fees, less than 1%

        [–]grazzeee 11 points12 points  (6 children)

        +1 on gemini! lowest fees iv found so far.

        [–]TenshiS 4 points5 points  (5 children)

        bitstamp, 0.25%

        [–][deleted]  (6 children)


          [–]acog 5 points6 points  (3 children)

          Am noob, can confirm. I have no clue what segwit is and use coinbase because it's easy and appears to be secure.

          Just to give you guys an outsider's perspective, the biggest thing that reassured me about Coinbase was the VC firms funding it. I know they will want to make their money by IPO, not by stealing my coins in the dead of night. Any breaches of security hurt the value of their investment and their ROI.

          If another exchange popped up HQ'd somewhere in Eastern Europe and the ownership was opaque, no amount of technical superiority would make me switch. I'd be too worried about insiders deciding it was easier to just take my wallet than run a business.

          [–]PM_The_Dildos 4 points5 points  (0 children)

          Painfully easy. It’s incredible how much of a struggle it is to get somebody to save money and ditch coinbase.

          [–][deleted]  (1 child)


            [–]lucky_rabbit_foot 7 points8 points  (0 children)

            The article says:

            However, it will be some time yet before that software will be ready for public use. In order to reduce the risk of users losing their funds, the Lightning Network developers are “not going to rush anything,” according to Padiou.

            [–]_mrb 181 points182 points  (20 children)

            LN will not come "very soon". Watch how difficult and slow it is for users to adopt a very simple change: Segwit adoption sits at a paltry 10% after 4 months http://segwit.party/charts/

            LN requires even more radical software and infrastructure changes. It will take years until adoption reaches high levels of use (50%+)

            [–]CaptainOuzo 59 points60 points  (8 children)

            The rate of adoption will depend on the perceived value of the innovation.

            To most people, SegWit is just a behind-the-scenes optimization - if they even understand that much. The benefits, if you read bitcoin core's FAQ, are really only understandable to people who know how bitcoin works. "Linear scaling of sighash operations", "script versioning", "malleability fixes"... SegWit is being marketed to developers, not end users. Such as the devs who are building lightning networks and sidechains.

            Here's how Lighting is marketing itself: "Instant Payments", "Low Cost", "Cross Blockchains". Yes please.

            Now that is something that end users will absolutely see value in. Might take a while for easy-to-use clients are available, though.

            [–]lvoscar 66 points67 points  (28 children)

            Alts useless? Lol

            [–]Joeboy 55 points56 points  (63 children)

            Possibly I misunderstood the video, but he's buying from a channel that's already been funded from the main blockchain, right? So in general if I walk into a coffee shop, I'm going to have to do a "traditional" main blockchain transaction before I can do that? And If I want to make use of this fast payment method, I have to maintain an always-funded channel for every coffee shop I might want to visit?

            Or have I got this wrong?

            Edit: Apparently I had indeed got this wrong, wrt needing separate channels for every vendor.

            [–]Elum224 16 points17 points  (57 children)

            Yes, your wallet will allow you to put funds into lightning. From there you can pay regular bitcoin addresses or pay to lightning addresses.

            [–]Joeboy 29 points30 points  (31 children)

            But it's not just "into lightning", is it? It's more like "into the Starbucks LN payment channel". And the Cafe Nero payment channel, and the Costa Coffee payment channel, and a separate payment channel for everybody I might want to pay. Unless these channels all get aggregated by a bank or something. Have I got this right?

            [–]Elum224 18 points19 points  (28 children)

            To give an example you open a channel to Starblocks.
            Starblocks has a channel open with Coffee Bean Co, who has channels open with Cafe Zero, Starblocks, Zip Coffee and CryptoKitty Coffee.

            You will be able to pay for coffee at any one of those coffee shops because your payment can go through Starblocks->Coffee Bean Co-> your desired coffee shop.
            You can also pay money to any other person who has a connection to those nodes.

            [–]Joeboy 4 points5 points  (9 children)

            Thanks! I worry a bit about the potential for mischief from bad nodes, but if it works as advertised it sounds cool.

            [–][deleted]  (8 children)


              [–]tomtomtom7 1 point2 points  (6 children)

              Potential "mischief" can also be turning off a machine, or rebooting in which case you will temporarily have no access to your funds.

              [–]Gundersen 3 points4 points  (3 children)

              Each hop will produce some delay, right? Since each node needs to react and do somethings to forward the payment to the next node. So it's best to route the payment via only one or two always-on nodes, since an offline node can't react until its back online, right? So this means you are unlikely to route the payment via your friends or acquaintances, and more likely to route it via large nodes with lots of liquidity? So to me it sounds like this will lead to a hub-and-spoke network with some really large hubs (think banks) in the center. That doesn't sound very decentralized?

              [–]CaptainOuzo 3 points4 points  (0 children)

              The concept of 7 degrees of separation is being applied here.

              Do a traceroute to a random website, even one in a different country. See how many hops you have. In principle the LN would work similarly.

              In the LN demonstration video I believe they had 3 hops, and it was FAST.

              You're right, it's less decentralized that bitcoin's regular node system. However, LN nodes are incentivized to run - unlike full nodes. They make profits. We can expect a reasonable number of them to appear in time.

              [–]CubanNippleCrisis69 1 point2 points  (1 child)

              What if I like Starblocks and Zip Coffee, but Zip and Starblocks are major competitors so they don't have a connecting channel? I can see companies creating partnerships like reward cards. Meaning I would then have to open payment channels with everyone I wanna pay.

              [–]TXTCLA55 7 points8 points  (23 children)

              So for one transaction I have to make two transactions... tell me again why this is a good thing? With and without lightning you're still playing the fee game and waiting +10 minutes.

              [–]Joeboy 3 points4 points  (0 children)

              Because I was wrong, basically. You don't need to maintain a separate payment channel for each vendor, you can use the lightning network like a checking account with infrequent transactions to/from the main blockchain. IIUC / in theory anyway.

              [–]Elum224 3 points4 points  (8 children)

              It'll work like this: I go to my bitcoin buying website I receive 20 bits in my wallet. If I don't already have a lightning channel open I can open one now. This takes 20 minutes for 2 confirmations.
              If I do have a channel the 20 bits go straight into my lightning wallet.

              Now when I'm out, I go to a coffee shop for breakfast and I can pay them 0.5 bits instantly, I have 19.5 bits left on my channel.
              Next I can go shopping, buy items in lots of different shops, an ice cream. I'm down to 11.1 bits. I meet a friend who owes me for dinner last night, they give me 1 bit. I have 12.5 bits. I want to buy an gift for 15 bits - I can go to the nearest BTM and top up with another 5 bits. I now have 17.5 bits and I can make the purchase.

              The 2 transactions at the start/end allow me to make dozens or hundreds of thousands of transactions. The scale factor is now 2tx's (or 700 bytes) per N transactions. Instead of 255 bytes per transaction.

              [–]TXTCLA55 2 points3 points  (7 children)

              Lightning channels cost around a dollar to open and close. Your math is already off. You can only transact (AFAIK) the amount you set up the channel for, so if it's 20bits then only 20bits can be transacted before the channel closes. Sauce, if interested. I can't see anyone opening a daily channel for their expenses for $2 a day, especially if they have a credit card or free debit transactions.

              [–]Elum224 1 point2 points  (1 child)

              Yes that's true. I forgot about the channel size. Fixed the post. I was just illustraiting that you can make multiple payments from one "funding" transaction. Once the channel is open you can use it as much as you like.
              Your funding fee gets spread over how many transactions you make on that channel.

              [–][deleted]  (3 children)


                [–]BadQualityBaiter 60 points61 points  (28 children)

                seriously this is needed ASAP

                today i was going to buy 300$ worth of btc in the dip, after i see the fees are almost 10% i said fuck it, really stupid

                [–]bedesda 18 points19 points  (22 children)

                Fees for the transfer or exchange fees?

                [–]BadQualityBaiter 19 points20 points  (20 children)


                i was going to buy 0,023 bitcoin, for the transfer it was 0,001 and 3% for the exchange, in total was almost 10%

                then if i want to send it to another wallet i've to pay another 0,001


                What exchange are you using that charges 3%?

                [–]AHemlockslie 9 points10 points  (11 children)


                No, exchanges almost always set the fees very high. Even higher than is really necessary for fast transactions usually. I'm not sure why. Might be in case your coins are spread across many internal wallet addresses, might actually be paying all those fees, might be skimming a little off the top.

                You can control that fee with your own wallet, though. If the transaction doesn't need to go through immediately, I paid less than 50 cents for a transaction a couple weeks ago. Even if fees are exploding from that, maybe a dollar or two. Maybe. You can probably still get by on 50 cents, though

                [–]BadQualityBaiter 19 points20 points  (6 children)

                yes but i cannot control the fee in the exchange

                so atm if i buy for example 100€, i am paying: 5-10€ for the transfer into the online wallet 3% for the exchange (in coinbase is even more) 5-10€ for the transfer into the offline wallet

                so i pay 100€ and end with 80€, if i buy 50€ this is even more exaggerated, you end with 25€ if you pay for 50

                this is huge for the casual buyer, they pay 50€ and they end with 25€ end they think is a total scam and never come again (actually happened to some of my friends, i don't blame them)

                this need to be solved ASAP or bitcoin will never be used in the real world

                [–]jnmclarty7714 5 points6 points  (0 children)

                I'm not sure why

                I know why. If it doesn't confirm in the next block or two, their support burden explodes answering "Why don't I see my bitcoin?????". If they have 1 support ticket from every 10 people trying to buy dozens of dollars worth...they lose money.

                Their target market is likely $10k+ accounts.

                [–]axelbrant 1 point2 points  (0 children)

                I would guess that if you want to have a good grip on the curve, you'd make sure the funds are readily deposited to exchange in advance...

                [–]borgelorp72 5 points6 points  (1 child)

                This is kind of a bad example of the problem that LN is addressing. Your issue is more with the exchange fees, and it sounds like you're using a credit card. If you use a bank transfer, the fee is 1% to buy (this isn't un-similar to a commission you'd pay at, say, Fidelity to buy a stock). If you want to transfer your money to gdax and buy using a limit order, you pay ZERO fees (free commission, even better than a typical stock broker). Then you can use gdax to transfer to your wallet, again, for FREE.

                The real problem that this is addressing is speed to get transaction confirmed (at times can be hours, others much quicker depending on traffic), and fees to move around after you've purchased and you're trying to spend or send to another wallet.

                [–]satoshistyle 19 points20 points  (3 children)


                The final sentence makes the whole article seem like a fluff piece. "It's coming soon!" (clickbate) "kidding, not really!"

                [–]OnSnowWhiteWings 8 points9 points  (0 children)

                Lightning is going to come really soon!

                "We’re Not Going to Rush”

                [–]magpietongue 51 points52 points  (9 children)

                Honestly I'm not convinced that Lightning is going to be the holy grail that people are pretending it will be. If Bitcoin scales as huge as many of us hope it will, scaling is going to require a lot more than one solution.

                [–]binarygold 9 points10 points  (0 children)

                It's not the holy grail indeed. For a while LN will only serve certain groups of users who transact frequently, and want to save on fees. Like traders. But moving all this activity off-chain will help on-chain transactions go through faster and cheaper.

                There are multiple other solutions in the works, we will just have to see which one works best.

                [–]youngbrows 28 points29 points  (8 children)

                Soon as in 18 months?

                [–]JanchK 10 points11 points  (11 children)

                Can one already run a node? Are there any instructions for runing a lightning node? Also, can I make any money running a node?

                [–]bitcoind3 15 points16 points  (3 children)

                Running a node requires you to keep some of your coins in an always-on internet connected hot-wallet. You shouldn't be doing this unless you really know how to keep your computer secure.

                [–]DangerousGame9 5 points6 points  (0 children)

                Unfortunately using LN at all will require you to run a full node and keep your coins in an always-on internet connected hot-wallet...or pay a centralized service to hold your coins and monitor your LN transactions for fraud.

                [–]BoGGy5m4ll5 4 points5 points  (1 child)

                Soon like another 3 years ?

                [–]Oto-bahn 60 points61 points  (12 children)

                "Will make alts useless"- Bitcoin BTC has been useless for more than half a year. This year, everytime I sent n00bs Bitcoin, I had to personally go to their location and 'un stuck' their Bitcoin they sent that was stuck in mempool. This makes BTC more than useless, it damages my reputation because I promise them something functional and futuristic, but they just think they lost their money and payment never arrived, "and had to call buddy to fix it".... but hey the price is going up!..

                [–]Holzkohlen 8 points9 points  (2 children)

                I believe it once I see it. People said that Segwit will fix all scaling issues a few months ago.

                [–]SlymaxOfficial 3 points4 points  (0 children)

                Segwit is required for lightning iirc

                [–]Tyxxzr 6 points7 points  (1 child)

                They have said it will come soon for the past three years...

                [–]Black_RL 47 points48 points  (72 children)

                Alts aren’t useless, you should diverse your portfolio, to reduce risk.

                [–]quittingislegitimate 68 points69 points  (46 children)

                My portfolio is 85% btc, but I feel like it's yahoo, while google is looming in the alts.

                [–]Black_RL 20 points21 points  (41 children)

                Even if you’re wrong, and BTC is google, you are doing it right, diversifying your portfolio.

                Btw, don’t underestimate the first mover advantage.

                [–]Experience111 47 points48 points  (27 children)

                First mover advantage is strong but I still think Bitcoin is the MySpace of cryptos. Really good and innovative ideas but some of the other cryptos out there will built on it and surpass the first mover. I still hold some BTC though.


                Bitcoin is Google but Eth is Amazon.

                There is going to be a bubble just like there was for tech and only the biggest will survive then strive. Come on 2020! hodl

                [–]Black_RL 9 points10 points  (21 children)

                You might be right, but I believe you’re wrong.

                Countries, funds, miners, merchants, people, Bitcoin has a ton of money invested in it, it’s becoming too big to fail.

                But then again, I might be wrong and you right.

                [–]EClarkee 37 points38 points  (5 children)

                It’s becoming too big to fail.

                And this is were I believe you're wrong. Just because there is a ton of money invested into something, does not mean it's too big to fail.

                [–]Black_RL 17 points18 points  (2 children)

                Like I said, I might be wrong, hell we might be both wrong and right.

                What if it’s a success for a long time then fails? Nothing lasts forever, except Nintendo.


                and Gobstoppers.

                [–]FockerCRNA 7 points8 points  (4 children)

                Theres a first mover advantage for those who recognize when its time to get out of bitcoin, if that time ever comes. If people think they will lose money, despite all the hodl memes, they will rush for the door. I wouldn't put any faith in thinking bitcoin is too big to fail.

                [–]lucky_rabbit_foot 4 points5 points  (4 children)

                The fact that miners are necessary is BTC's biggest risk for future dominance. PoW uses a ton of energy and lots of people seem to think it's wasted. I personally don't, but it's been shown that PoW simply isn't as necessary for decentralization as people first thought. The fact that it's not necessary to invest in hardware with a limited lifespan, a warehouse to house it, and energy to run it, is a huge risk. It also means there's a huge up-front cost to becoming a miner which is a risk to decentralization. Of course full nodes are the ones that verify transactions, but they won't be included in a block unless a miner chooses to put it into a block, so centralization of miners is dangerous.

                And people that are working on ASIC-resistant PoW solutions are missing the forest for the trees and trying to solve the wrong problem.

                I do think BTC dominance will continue for a while, as long as it's profitable to build warehouses full of mining rigs. But if there's a "flippening" event and some other currency (based on PoS) passes BTC's market cap, I don't think it'll be able to recover. The price will go down, miners will abandon their operations, and the BTC network will continue on as a hobby project but will have no significant economic footprint.

                People will look back on PoW coins and think "what were we even thinking? what a waste!"

                [–]Black_RL 3 points4 points  (0 children)

                Nice read, let me just add some food to ease your mind.

                First I want to say that although people are always afraid of the new great thing, they seem to forget that it can be Bitcoin, Bitcoin is not a finished product and it will never be, it evolves over time.

                So if other alts copy features from Bitcoin, Bitcoin can do the same.

                Second, about mining, huge capital is investing in this, do you think they won’t do everything they can to make it a success? Lobbies, money, laws, news, marketing, I mean everything?

                Just don’t invest what you can’t loose, relax and enjoy the ride.

                [–]bathrobehero 1 point2 points  (2 children)

                Only the tiny vocal minority (aka. reddit and forums) feel that way. They also feel they know better and know how the rest of the userbase feels and what they want. All of it is untrue regardless if some people in this online bubble agree with you. All the readers of the Bitcoin subreddits combined are all just a tiny, irrelevant spec of dust in the machine that is Bitcoin.

                [–]quittingislegitimate 3 points4 points  (12 children)

                Sorry 85% btc and eth. Once I had "won" with bitcoin/eth. I cut off 15% and threw mine to the alts. Here's my chart.


                Open to suggestions!

                [–]Experience111 8 points9 points  (17 children)

                Exactly, there are not only shitcoins out there. However I think what OP means is that LN will kill most of the shitcoins. Won't kill Ethereum, IOTA, Dash, Monero, Ripple, etc though as those are mostly legit coins. I also just discovered Xtrabytes which looks really promising to me. The technology looks really incredible.

                [–]Black_RL 16 points17 points  (11 children)

                Exactly, don’t forget about our younger brother! Litecoin!

                [–]SpaceDuckTech 8 points9 points  (4 children)

                The Silver to Bitcoins Gold!

                The lower price of Litecoin is a psychological trigger that will make people want to park their wealth into it. in my opinion. No one can afford a $20k Bitcoin, but a lot of people can afford a $100 Litecoin. (yeah yeah yeah, i know bitcoin can be bought in fractions.)

                [–]Black_RL 8 points9 points  (2 children)

                This, so much this.

                And guess what you can buy in Coinbase? Yeah, that’s right.

                “20k? No way I can afford this!”

                “100? Well..... what harm can it do?”

                [–][deleted]  (1 child)


                  [–]Black_RL 2 points3 points  (0 children)

                  This, just wait for Litecoin, this time I’m not going to be the sucker in the story.

                  [–]waltwalt 1 point2 points  (4 children)

                  My portfolio used to be 50/50 BTC/eth, having changed nothing my portfolio is now 98/2, to reduce risk are you saying I should transfer half my BTC into eth to balance it back out?

                  [–]jbaum517 8 points9 points  (0 children)

                  People saying that diversification is putting all your money into different coins are wrong about what diversification really means.

                  Diversification is putting your money across various industries/markets that are uncorrelated such that if one crashes, you don't lose everything.

                  To think that putting your money into various types of coins is diversification is dumb because they do tend to move together and are a very related industry.

                  [–]Black_RL 25 points26 points  (26 children)

                  It has to be implemented, not sure is gonna be the game changer some people think it’s going to be.

                  [–]isoldmywifeonEbay 5 points6 points  (25 children)

                  For what reason?

                  [–]tomtomtom7 60 points61 points  (14 children)

                  The primary risk of centralization, isn't people running SPV instead of full nodes, but people using trusted 3rd parties instead of controlling their own keys and money.

                  Let us say Lightning Network works exactly as advertised. There are still some limitations by design:

                  • You can only receive money when you are online. So if you ever want to receive passive payments, you will need to have a node running 24/7.
                  • You can temporarily not access some of your money if a peer is unavailable. This will happen occasionally.
                  • You cannot use LN for large payments, so you will have to occasionally "top-up" your channels and wait for them.

                  These may seem like minor issues, but it means that for average Joe, it will be easier, cheaper and more convenient to trust a 3rd party than to control his own node and keys.

                  This is in sheer contrast with the SPV scaling model, where it is easier, cheaper and more convenient to use your own wallet that verifies the PoW and your own transactions, than to use a 3rd party.

                  LN may be cool for microtransactions, but for decentralized scaling it is vastly inferior to the SPV/on-chain model.

                  [–]Black_RL 6 points7 points  (9 children)

                  Reason is what I said, just look at SegWit adoption.

                  How can it be a game changer if it’s not implemented?

                  [–]varikonniemi 6 points7 points  (3 children)

                  Customers of big services are not annoyed enough at the fees that they would request halving of them using segwit. Simple as that. Most criticism is here in this echo chamber where 50% are altcoin shills magnifying the whine.

                  USA people are used to pay 20 dollars for DOMESTIC bank transfer. Bitcoin is still affordable and a good deal.

                  [–]isoldmywifeonEbay 9 points10 points  (4 children)

                  SegWit alone doesn't solve the fee problem. LN does. The adoption of it will be very quick because there is a huge incentive to use it.

                  [–]Black_RL 3 points4 points  (3 children)

                  Hope you’re right.

                  [–]Bmjslider 5 points6 points  (2 children)

                  He's not.

                  Adoption will be slow. Quicker than segwit, but still slow.

                  [–][deleted]  (1 child)


                    [–]SlymaxOfficial 8 points9 points  (2 children)

                    About fucking time. I've got a $110k transaction with $66 fee that is 30 hours unconfirmed. And a $110k transaction with $250 fee that's now 24 hours unconfirmed. Getting pretty disillusioned with the state of bitcoin.

                    [–]DbZbert 3 points4 points  (0 children)

                    Make a lot of alt coins useless? How?

                    [–]Eyes0pen 3 points4 points  (5 children)

                    Why not just use litecoin? You know the first ones to implement the lightning network.

                    [–]Shniper 3 points4 points  (0 children)

                    not even going to go near lightning on the first version, far too much money that could be lost.

                    First versions of software always have bugs and security flaws. When bitcoin was cheap fine but now its worth over 10K there is no way im touching it until its road tested for a while and it hits version 2 to know most of the major bugs have been removed.

                    It also only just hit alpha the other day, its got a long way to go till its released.

                    [–]kirbence 3 points4 points  (1 child)

                    Zero fee instant transactions that aren't settled on the chain. If I want to move my BTC somewhere else like an exchange, LN won't make a difference. Right?


                    The 'This will make a lot of Alts useless' was not necessary, a shame that it arrived at the top of the posts. Come on, we don't have to do that :)

                    [–]Adult_Reasoning 24 points25 points  (16 children)

                    Isn't Lightning Network more or less like a "bank."

                    Why the hell are we excited about that?

                    [–]cdeckerLightning Network Expert 16 points17 points  (13 children)

                    Isn't Lightning Network more or less like a "bank."

                    How is it like a bank? You can set up channels with any other user, retain full control over the funds, gain the ability to send/receive them quicker and at lower cost, and you can close the channel at any point in time should you wish to use them elsewhere.

                    [–]Adult_Reasoning 11 points12 points  (11 children)

                    I watched this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJ_lVBLUjXk

                    Full disclosure: At the end of it, the guy recommends B-cash. Which I don't necessarily agree with; but with that said, the entire video is a pretty good description of what the Lightning Network actually is. He may be biased, I dunno. But regardless, it is worth taking a look.

                    [–]cdeckerLightning Network Expert 35 points36 points  (9 children)

                    Honestly I'm tempted to ignore this conspiracy, and since I am a Blockstream employee people will not believe me anyway, but let's try.

                    Lightning is not a sidechain, which I believe the whole argument in the video hinges on. Lightning channels are an agreement between any two endpoints to establish a channel and negotiate the ownership of the funds in the channel over time. At any point in time all participants have a bitcoin transaction in their hands to settle and payout their funds on-chain. There is no central intermediary and there is no requirement for special hardware. In particular Lightning is an open-source effort that multiple companies contribute to, working on the specification and implementing clients and applications. This is by no means a Blockstream only project.

                    The video talks about high fees for the settlement. It is one of our goals to lighten the load on the blockchain, by settling smaller payments off-chain and only reflecting the final sums on the blockchain. The result is that there is less load on the bitcoin blockchain, and fewer transactions that compete for space in the blockchain. In addition Lightning has some other nice features like real-time payments (no need for confirmations since endpoints can always enforce the agreed upon state on-chain) and increased privacy (not every coffee transaction is reflected on-chain for eternity).

                    The video also talks about forcing users to adopt Lightning or Sidechains. Both are open-source technologies that anybody can implement, and adoption is opt-in based: you like the tradeoffs of a system, you're free to join, if you don't you're free to continue using what you want.

                    The remainder of the video basically gives away the true motivation: pushing a forked off coin as the new bitcoin. We might have ideological differences when it comes to block size, but everybody should be able to think critically about the information that is presented, and not just follow what other people say.

                    [–]Adult_Reasoning 5 points6 points  (1 child)

                    Thank you for this elaborate explanation/reply. I learned a lot.

                    And thank you for the continued hardwork in blockchain technology.

                    [–]cdeckerLightning Network Expert 9 points10 points  (0 children)

                    Glad I could help :-) Those were really interesting questions to answer, sorry if that last one sounded a bit frustrated :-)

                    [–]inthearenareddit 4 points5 points  (0 children)

                    Awesome explanation - thanks!

                    [–]zeperf 1 point2 points  (0 children)

                    Its more akin to Mastercard or Visa than a bank, correct - assuming there are large lightning nodes containing multiple vendors.

                    [–]m55c55[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

                    Here is the direct link to the youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a73Gz3Tvx3k&feature=youtu.be

                    [–]berryfarmer 2 points3 points  (1 child)

                    it won't make Bitcoin fungible, however, so some alts will still shine

                    [–]CountyMcCounterson 2 points3 points  (3 children)

                    Bernie can still win, just keep matching while we wait for him to win soon

                    [–]Virulent11 2 points3 points  (0 children)

                    You still need a block size increase so everyone can open and close their lightning channels efficiently. LN alone doesn't get us to almost zero fees. It's a great step in the right direction but we need a block size increase as well!

                    [–]redditer0 2 points3 points  (1 child)

                    How Lighting Network will be used by the end user? For example, if I want to transfer some bitcoins from address A to address B (let's imagine address B is an exchange address), what should I need?

                    [–]drunklel 6 points7 points  (3 children)

                    why bothering doing small transaction off chain when 3rd generation coins can do them on chain with zero fees as well?

                    [–]efadd 2 points3 points  (0 children)

                    How are these generations broken down? What differentiates 1st from 2nd, and 2nd from 3rd? Also, which coins specifically can scale on chain with low fees? The two biggest alternatives I'm aware of are Eth's proof of stake, which isn't implemented yet, and Iota's tangle, which is far from ready for wide spread adoption from what I understand.

                    If you're aware of a coin currently ready to scale to a global currency, I'd be incredibly interested to know what it is.

                    [–]sz1a 16 points17 points  (17 children)

                    Alts only work fast and cheap because no one is using them. Lightning makes the whole block debate moot.

                    [–]edtatkow 36 points37 points  (7 children)

                    Ethereum is used twice as much as all the other combined.


                    iirc lightning only helps limiting transaction count between two parties. So if you want to buy something at a webshop once there is not benefit. It will only benefit parties that exchange large amounts of transactions, so it won't solve the block debate.

                    [–]heldire90 4 points5 points  (6 children)

                    Question - if there are zero fees, how will the miners make profit once all coins are mined?

                    [–]djgreedo 3 points4 points  (0 children)

                    The blockchain still runs as usual under the lightning network. The vast majority of transactions will be on the lightning network, but there still needs to be opening and closing transactions on the blockchain, and there can still be regular blockchain transactions.

                    As I understand it, the blocksize will gradually increase to meet demand, and in theory the blocks would end up being quite large (100MB+) and each will hold enough transactions to pay miners plenty.

                    [–]Run_Che 1 point2 points  (4 children)

                    How will Neo, Vertcoin and Iota fare when Lightning Network comes out?

                    [–][deleted]  (7 children)


                      [–]Elum224 2 points3 points  (6 children)

                      No, there will be more onchain transactions when LN gets used meaning more fees for miners.

                      [–]Okieant33 1 point2 points  (0 children)

                      Can someone explain this to me a bit better? Dude was talking fast as fuck and I'm a NYer so that's saying something.

                      [–]pachatc 1 point2 points  (0 children)

                      Out of interest which alt coins would this make useless?


                      Why will this make Alt coins useless?

                      [–]the_calibre_cat 1 point2 points  (0 children)

                      A lot of alts are already useless. I like alts, though, because competition is good. I also like Bitcoin, and have been sleeping like a baby lately.


                      lol thats what you think